Are you ready for Blu-ray 3D? We aren't either, but AMD is excited to show off its Blu-ray stereoscopic 3D standard. The company today announced that it will demonstrate the forthcoming "standard" at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show.

AMD said that it will be partnering with CyberLink to jointly preview its 3D technology in the Grand Lobby of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Ten layers, plenty of space

TDK Corp seems to be keen on sending the Blu-ray packing, as the company developed a 10-layer optical disc with capacity of 320GB, where each layer is capable of storing up to 32GB of data. Just for comparison, Blu-ray discs can store up to 25GB per layer.

Apparently, the more layers the medium has, the weaker the signal gets, so expanding optical drives by introducing more layers requires improved transmittance, something that TDK effectively tackled by enhancing the composition of used materials.

Holographic storage involves holograms, images of data, being stored in layers in a CD-sized disk's recording surface. The images are created by two laser beams and read by a laser beam. GE's researchers at its Applied Optics Laboratory managed to shrink these images, calling them micro-holograms. They achieved this to the point where the images were also reflective enough - 200 times more so than before - to be read by optics that could be used to read existing optical formats. A CD-size disk could store 500GB using this technology, with 1TB and greater capacity potentially possible in the 2011/2012 period.

Sharp is gearing up to start mass production of high capacity Blu-ray discs capable of storing 100GB of data and churning it out at 8x read speeds.

The extra capacity and performance are achieved by adding additional layers to the discs. The new discs will feature three or four layers for 75GB and 100GB capacities. All this is made possible by recent advances in laser technology and improvements in laser optics. Sharp will use 405nm blue violet lasers for the new media, while conventional DVD drives use red lasers with 600nm wavelengths.

Toshiba will sell its first Blu-ray DVD player starting in November, the company announced Thursday.

The BDX2000 will retail for $249.99. It includes BD-Live, which lets users take advantage of Web-based interactive features via an Ethernet connection. The device also includes an SD card slot, which may be required to access some of the BD-Live content, Toshiba said.